First time post, long time reader. I loaded a lightweight distro called vector 4.3 ( basically a trimmed down version of slack ) running kernel 2.6. It's on a 200mmx with 64MB ram and i must say i'm pretty impressed so far. It is a router/firewall for my network using gShield as the firewall. I want to set up my wife's XP system (upstairs) on the network (in the basement) using wifi (2 motorola wpci810g cards). Here are the interfaces on the router: eth0(dhcp) outside internet, eth1(192.168.1.1) internal gateway, wlan0(wpci810g wifi card). From what i have read i need to bridge eth1 and wlan0 together for it to work. I have downloaded and installed: ndiswrapper, bridge-utils, openvpn. They all installed and work fine from what i can tell, but i seem to be missing the mark somewhere. Here is my ifconfig:

I noticed the MAC for wlan0 and br0 are the same.
All the clients in the LAN can ping each other and br0.
winXP cant ping anything or be pinged (pung?). I manually set its ip configuration with my router settings.
Now the questions: Are the physical locations a problem? Do i really need to bridge eth1 and wlan0? Can i make my router an access point? Do i need to make an ad-hoc or managed network?

Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated by me and my wife.
If you need any more info please let me know.